The Net: Soft Apocalypse, by Local Author David Matthews

Local Author David Matthews has just launched The Net: Soft Apocalypse, the second in a trilogy and sequel to Redeemed from Time.

In Redeemed from Time, Pee-Bee sheds the burden of his family’s past. A new life beckons. But Clean, an emerging populist party, and the Euphoria Church are challenging the status quo, triggering civil unrest across the nation. In London, rival gangs battle to secure their territory. Pee-Bee is drawn into the turmoil when, having witnessed a failed terrorist attack, he has to go into hiding for his own protection. That means, once again and against his better judgment, calling on Melchizedek for advice and direction.

By the time we join The Net, the story picks up two years later with social stability threatened by a populist political movement.

David was born in 1957 and grew up in Hampshire in a large, multigenerational household . Educated at Sidcot, a Quaker boarding school, he found stability away from a tense home shaped by his mother’s declining health and her conversion to Jehovah’s Witnesses.

After leaving school in 1975, he briefly pursued forestry before studying English Literature at King’s College London . He later trained as a teacher, met his future wife, and began a fulfilling career in education, eventually spending more than thirty years in Croydon, where he raised three sons and served as head teacher of St Andrew’s School . During this time, his faith returned to Anglicanism, and he served as churchwarden until 2017.

In 2021, with their sons grown, David and his wife moved to Ipswich, reconnecting with his maternal family roots in Otley, where generations of relatives had lived.

Today, David divides his time between writing, serving as churchwarden of Ipswich Minster, and working as a director of Greener Ipswich CIC, the community‑focused environmental organisation he helped establish in 2024 to regenerate the urban environment and support marginalised people into employment.

The book is currently available to purchase at Amazon in paperback and kindle editions

Who wrote this about Ipswich?

Sam Sherman

Sam is a Co-Founder of Ipswich.love. Passionate about Ipswich, Sam looks to see how we might jointly reverse some of the recent negativity and bring some deserved positivity back to our beloved Town.